The ethics of maxima and minima combined with social justice as a form of public corruption prevention
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The ethics of maxima and minima combined with social justice as a form of public corruption prevention Carlos Novella-García 1
& Alexis
Cloquell-Lozano 1
Accepted: 12 October 2020/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract In recent decades, corruption has become one of the main problems perceived by Spanish society. As a result, the country’s citizens are experiencing a high level of disenchantment with politics and a general loss of confidence in the way public institutions function. Although in the last few years more stringent laws have been brought in to speed up procedures and help pursue crimes of corruption, the fact of the matter is that they have done little to reduce these cases and so they are not enough to put an end to the problem. There is a strong likelihood that, if a positive morality and a strong mutual union between ethics and politics were in place, legal loopholes would not be used for individual profitmaking operations that make a mockery of justice and the common good. Because of this, and taking public ethics as a basis, this article will review and discuss Adela Cortina’s hermeneutic definitions “of maxima and minima” and Agustín Domingo Moratalla’s concept of “social justice” in order to suggest tools that can be applied in preventing and fighting against political corruption. Keywords Corruption . Political crimes . Public administration . Public service . Ethics .
Social justice
Introduction As Pérez and Llaneras [1] point out, there have been more than 2000 cases of corruption in Spain over the last two decades. Many of these cases are not widely
* Carlos Novella-García [email protected] Alexis Cloquell-Lozano [email protected]
1
Science Education Department, Universidad Católica de Valencia San Vicente Mártir, Valencia, Spain
García C.N., Lozano A.C.
known in the public domain. Corruption cases in the social and political sphere began to rise in late 2007, which coincided with the bursting of the real estate bubble and with the much-publicised Malaya case in Marbella. Since these events there has been a proliferation of all types of corruption cases across the entirety of Spain’s territory; primarily political acts that affect public authorities at different levels of government, particularly local, while also involving the public administration. The following cases became especially notorious for their scale, scope, and repercussion in the media: Bárcenas-Gürtel (Madrid, Valencia and Castile-León), Púnica (Madrid and Valencia), Palau y Pretoria (Catalonia), ERE (Andalusia), Nóos (Balearic Islands and Region of Valencia) and Pokémon (Galicia). Over time, these fraud cases have been generating a banal view of the term corruption in society’s collective imagination. Corruption in the public sphere, however, has become a habitual part of media communication and now has prompted great social indignation on the part of citizens, who are demanding higher levels of transparency in political practice. The lack of effective measures to prevent and fight against corruption has led
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